The Slow and Silent Fall
by chryseis dione
Summary: The question of means and ends defines Revan and the Exile. How does one keep their humanity through inhumane times? Pre-KOTOR one-shots, LSF/DSF Revan, LSF Exile
1. Justification

This collection of one-shots, most of which take place pre-KOTOR I or II, and do not take into account Knights of the Old Republic comic canon. All are DSF/LSF Revan, LSF Exile. I do not own the characters, and have quoted select bits of dialogue for the sake of continuity. Enjoy!

--------

"Justified"

DSF Revan

---------

"I know what I'm doing." She always tells Malak that, when whatever scruples he has managed to cling to lead him to question her. Sometimes, she spits it out angrily and then storms off, and sometimes, she says it so softly he can barely hear her, a pleading frown and wide eyes begging him to believe her. He never does, but he always gives up after she says that, because neither of them wants to waste what little time remains to them fighting. The peace never lasts; he usually leaves her with a challenge hanging in the air between them.

There was a time when his questions were her balance. Now, when he questions her, anger explodes and she wants to strike him down for trying to tear her apart when she so desperately needs his help. Never mind his opinions, though. She knows what she is doing, and that is what she will keep telling herself.

She completes the training of the students the Academies produce and commands her fleet and plots her next move, and they all bow down to her and call her Lord, and she does what she has to. She has always done what she had to do. After the bombardment of Telos, she lauded Saul before their followers, but something died inside her when she thought of all the people who died in that senseless act of assertion. Saul had been fortunate to survive that encounter, the first when she almost let her anger entirely rule her actions. Pain had a terrifying power. When she first developed a program to train assassins to convert Jedi, she wondered if it was really worth it to break a living being so entirely, even if it was for a greater purpose.

She remembers seeing the first batch of broken Jedi after their "conversion" and how much she wished that she could tell them that this was the only way to make them strong enough to face the coming threat, that if she didn't do this, they would only die at the hands of an inept Republic and an ignorant and apathetic Jedi Council. She could not and had not, of course, because she must be merciless. She must be the most ruthless Sith Lord the galaxy has seen, must play the part to perfection, or no one will follow her and she will only divide the galaxy even more and make it more prone to the Sith threat that even now draws closer. It's not even hard to step into that role any more.

Perhaps it would have been hard for the innocent padawan she was before the Mandalorian Wars, but it is not for a woman who has known genocide and betrayal and war and has become too used to making the difficult decisions. The person she once was could not have made decisions of which planet to sacrifice and which to save without being broken, but she is stronger now. Malak has grown more resilient, too. They are neither of them who they were as children, as Jedi Knights, as war heroes, even who they were when they stood for the first time on the bridge of the Star Forge. She knows this because now she looks back on all the things she has done and can't manage to feel the regret she knows she ought to. The mask makes it easier. So does the justification.

She knows what she has to do. She has to kill Jedi and murder those who oppose her and eliminate military targets, even if it means nearly destroying an entire planet. She has to create a hierarchy of ruthless, vicious, power hungry monsters who do not share her vision but are only the attack dogs she must set loose upon the galaxy. There are even times when it gives her some measure of satisfaction. The Jedi, with their righteous indignation, give her the least regret; in many ways, their fate is so beautifully justified, and as she watches more and more of them convert, her anger toward them is appeased. It is even more satisfying to know that someday, they will see what she has done, and will be forced to laud her wisdom, to accept her as the greatest of their number.

The Republic, too, will no longer betray her, for it will be extinct. A new order will arise, an order that will never abandon its devoted followers to the merciless. Her new order will not let worlds burn for no good reason because they could not get a majority vote to agree on the budget proposals for a war. She will tear that village of idiots to the ground and raise a fortress in its place. One day, they will thank her, but for now, it is enough that they fear her. Their fear is as heady as any drink, for it lets her know that she has reached the height of power she has striven for.

She has so much more power now. Without restriction, the Force courses through her like an electrical current, and she commands it as no living Jedi has ever done. When she meets Malak aboard the Star Forge, she can practically feel it crackling in the air, and she can sense how it surrounds him like armor. He seems taller and more terrible and overwhelming now, and the golden glow of his gaze as his vocabulator grates out a low, mechanical greeting no longer disturbs her, but only reminds her of the power they've discovered. As they lay awake at night and feel the power of the Star Forge resonating through them, she knows that he is reveling in it, too. This is their destiny, he tells her. This is who they were meant to be.

It is only when she leaves him after their inevitable morning argument that a tiny thread of doubt winds its way into her mind. His remorse has long since been abandoned; which should tell her something, because Mal was always the righteous one. Sometimes, he scares her, as he did this morning when he mentioned his research into some of the deeper, more hidden functions of the battle station. A nagging feeling tells her that she should be concerned, but she also knows that they will need all the power they can gather to themselves to fight the coming battle. Perhaps she should be worried about the accelerated rate at which he has been changing since she sent him to oversee operations at the Star Forge. Perhaps she should be disturbed at her lack of regret. Or perhaps not; she is only doing what she has to.

It is her choice, after all, to be the Dark Lord of the Sith, her choice to make herself Darth Revan, destroyer of the Republic. She never fell; she chose to throw herself into the dark side, a willing sacrifice. Yet sometimes, she wonders if the darkness that has always called but never captured her is slowly pulling her in. She wonders if perhaps she will become sick of fighting it and just give in. She wonders if she already has given in, and just doesn't know it yet. She lies alone in the dark in her private chambers on her flagship, amidst her massive fleet, and closes her eyes and her mind against everything and feels lost and confused, which should be impossible, because she knows what she's doing.


	2. The Game

----

The Game

LSF Revan/Malak

----

During the war, they began to play a game with each other. It wasn't a game with any stakes, just a little game to help them make it through the increasing darkness.

"When the war's over, we'll get married and live in all alone in a hut in the woods on Bakura," she would say, curled into fetal position in a corner of her tiny quarters.

"When the war's over, we'll travel across the entire galaxy, and I'll finally get you to teach me every language you know," he countered, trying not to look so uncomfortable as he hunched over in the corner with her.

Weeks passed, things got worse, and she began to wonder if she'd ever see him again. They would send messages to each other, and amidst the jumble of tactical discussions and orders, she always waited for the end, when he stopped being her field commander and his ragged voice would say "When the war is over, we'll go to bed and not leave for at least a week." The promise in his voice and the brief spark of life in his eyes as he said it made her smile a little, although her happiness at the thought was as fleeting as his.

"When the war is over," she sent back in her answer, along with orders to lead their section of the fleet in a feint to distract the Mandalorians from another of Admiral Dodonna's suicidal plans, "we won't feel responsible for anyone besides ourselves."

The war dragged on, and their game became a hideous mockery of reality. They still played, though, because it was habit, and it gave them something to hold onto. They clung to what few moments they could steal in all the chaos, all the more precious because they were so rare.

They were trying to determine what to do about the Mandalorian presence on Dagary Minor, and no one would listen to them when they explained their fears about the Republic's plan. Revan scowled and shouted and stormed out of the meeting. Malak found her later, pacing furiously in the hangar bay with clenched fists.

"When the war is over, I hope they take responsibility for the way their fracking stupidity is getting our people out there fracking killed," she spat, glaring at the doorway as if her gaze could penetrate steel and strike down the admirals in their chairs.

She was surprised when he pried open her fingers and took both her hands in his. He tried to reassure her, but she still sensed his own anger. "When the war is over, they will. And they will look at us and know what we have done for the Republic."

They finally started to win, and after taking back Taris, they lay in his quarters and tried not to think about the war with little success. "When the war is over," Malak said, lightly tracing circles on her back, "we're going to get rid of the Exchange for good."

"When the war is over," she agreed, "we're going after Czerka, too." And at that moment, it seemed almost possible.

Then the war dragged on. More people died every day. They were giving the orders now, the difficult orders that determined who lived and who died. They watched the destruction of entire planets, knowing that there was no other choice but to use what few resources they had to protect the key locations, but it didn't make it any easier. Victories and losses wove together and it seemed as if the war would never end. And still they played the game.

"When the war is over..." she began in her first communication to him after the second battle for Dxun, and then found that she couldn't finish. She was close to crying, and when she looked at him, she could feel his despair, even though they were separated by half a galaxy.

"It will be," he told her. "Someday." She wondered if he really believed it.

When she found herself standing over the dead body of Mandalore, she mouthed the words. "When the war's over..." She staggered over to Malak, and passed out in his arms.

In the med bay, she woke up to the bitter smell of kolto and the hum of machines and turned to him. "It's not over," she muttered. The knowledge she had managed to tear from Mandalore's mind before she dealt the killing blow confirmed the suspicions that had been building the past few weeks, and she wasn't sure where to go from there. The enormity of what had just happened had yet to sink in.

"When will it be over?" he asked her, taking her hand.

"I don't know," she told him honestly. "Maybe never." And then the game was over.


	3. Yellow

----

Yellow

LSF Revan

----

She was in a field, surrounded by tall yellow grass as far as the eye could see. A datapad rested at her left and a lightsaber at her right, but she was ignoring both of these objects. When she laid back, stretching out on the ground, he could hear the crackle of the brittle grass breaking beneath her. The stalks caught strands of dark hair that hung loose around her. Her eyes fluttered shut, and he was quite sure that he had never seen anything so beautiful.

For what seemed an eternity, she lay there. Then, she got up, picking up the lightsaber. When she ignited it, its golden light matched the fierce glow of her eyes. He watched her go through the basic forms. Every move was graceful. The forms were simple and each movement was flawless. It was their dance, he remembered. Dueling back and forth, the give and take, win and lose, leading and following, weaving in and out just as she used to braid the long stalks of grass into little knots. An old habit from growing up on a farm, she had told him.

He thought of the days when they would sit in the middle of the plains and she would weave knots as they discussed their lessons. Love knots, she had called them. She tried to teach him once, but it was one thing he could not learn easily. He had claimed that his larger fingers weren't as agile as her tiny ones, but she had rolled her eyes and insisted that it wasn't lack of dexterity but lack of patience and attention that hindered him.

The yellow lightsaber whirled through the air, occasionally slicing through the golden grass waving gently in the wind. She pulled out of the basic form and began to execute more complicated forms. He smiled as he watched, but then, it seemed to him that the yellow lightsaber clashed with a red one, and suddenly, she shifted before his eyes into a robed, masked figure of red and black. The Jedi with the yellow lightsaber advanced, slicing into her side. She shrieked in pain, and then, everything exploded in a flash of yellow and white.

Malak bolted awake in his chambers aboard the _Leviathan_. The memories were still strong. He would overcome them yet; it was not a weakness he could tolerate. The Revan that haunted his dreams had died even before the Jedi had come to kill her, when the need to save the Republic and fall into the darkness had consumed her. It was not fitting, to think of her as a woman lying in a field of dying plants, still trusting the wisdom of those who would later betray her.

He needed something on which to focus the fury that filled him whenever he thought of her. Perhaps the pursuit of Bastila would be the diversion he needed. It would be so fulfilling to take her, to twist and torture her and make her suffer for what she had done to Revan, and to him. His agents had brought him rumors that Bastila had acquired a force-sensitive follower recently. It did explain how she escaped Taris against all odds. This acolyte seemed to be a challenge worthy of his notice, or at least would be once she was trained as a proper Jedi. Then he would break them both. The Dark Lord of the Sith would have smiled to himself, had he had a mouth with which to smile.


End file.
